John Sherman, chief information officer of the Department of Defense and a 2022 Wash100 Award winner, took part in a fireside chat alongside newly appointed chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at DOD Craig Martell, during a virtual symposium on Wednesday to discuss how they will work together and the initiatives that the office of CDAO will focus on going forward.
One of the initiatives Sherman and Martell talked about is the Artificial Intelligence and Data Accelerator, which Sherman said will be one of the office of CDAO’s flagship activities, DOD said Wednesday.
Sherman said ADA seeks to enable “AI data and visual service experts to really see what the problems are for the respective combatant commanders and what they need to be able to get after and unlock their data, think about what sort of AI and ML capabilities would help them get ahead of their particular problem sets.”
Sherman also discussed with Martell other focus areas of CDAO, such as enabling machine learning and AI across combatant commands to help advance Joint All Domain Command and Control and leveraging AI as DOD pursues zero trust adoption.
“Those are some of the main big things, but there's going to be innumerable other things as we look at leveraging commercial SATCOM, as we look at other C3 areas, and as we work together just to make sure that CDAO has the very best technology to get after your mission sets,” he added.
During the discussion, Martell also talked about DOD’s relationship with industry and the need to build up the talent pipeline.
The CDAO office achieved full operating capability status on June 1 and will manage DOD’s policy formulation and strategy development for AI, data and analytics.
